Abstract
The dynamics of settler colonialism are intriguing areas of enquiry with contesting geo-political variables to consider. The objective of this article is to address the complexity of settlers and the settler landscapes in the occupied territories of Israel through a literary analysis of the novel The Hilltop written by the Israeli author Assaf Gavron. The novel brings into life the chaotic aura that surrounds the settler landscapes, and through this article we attempt to deconstruct the complexity of settler lives by analyzing the territorial behaviors of the settlers as portrayed in the novel. The fictional landscape of The Hilltop is closely read to understand the interplay of space, territory, and power as advanced by Foucault, Gold, and Duarte to explore the diversity of human behaviors in terms of their political, religious, economic, and emotional engagement with the surroundings. We also examine the significance of the fictionalized accounts of territorialized social groups, such as the Jewish Israeli settlers for re-imagining their social image against the representations in dominant political and media discourses.
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Notes
The demarcated territories defended by animals for the fulfillment of basic needs such as food, shelter and reproduction had been by a subject of evolutionist enquiry which initiated scholarly intervention in the field of territoriality. The animal territoriality is however, identified to be an innate aspect with deep-seated physiological implications.
Unlike the modern times, the notion of space was subjected to concrete or symbolic representations following the Euclidean order. The spatial turn since Renaissance has emphasized the horizontality and heterogeneity of space–time relations. Lotman’s spatial perspective and his views on landscape are postmodern as he advocates for the aesthetic contemplation of landscape as an object of geography.
In Duarte’s discussion, space, place, and territory form the spatial matrices that determine the nature of human behaviors. These concepts possess unique traits which make them interdependent but not interchangeable. Duarte explains that understanding the differences amongst these concepts will simultaneously perceive, conceive and design multiple spatialities.
Plato defines Khora as a placeless entity from which everything is derived. It has no form because it provides form to everything.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German mathematician and philosopher argued that space is entirely relational in contradiction to the Newtonian absolute theory of space.
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Soman, N., Padmanabhan, B. Human territorial behaviors and power politics in assaf gavron’s the hilltop: a spatial re-examination. GeoJournal 89, 21 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-024-11027-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-024-11027-4